IT Spending 101: 4 Rules All Midmarket CIOs Should Follow

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According to Browning, "good enough" solutions are usually appropriate for 70 percent of midmarket CIOs' IT requirements. Executives should embrace new IT delivery options and evaluate alternative sourcing models for every system upgrade. Midmarket CIOs also need to make sure they recognize that many IT investments only need to be "good enough" or have parity with the market. While applications such as financials and email are mission-critical, they are not market-differentiating: It is unlikely that an organization will win new customers with an extraordinary accounts receivable process. However, an organization can lose customers if it's not as good as the general marketplace. So, midmarket CIOs need to make sure they are "good enough" at nondifferentiating business processes and aren't overinvesting in the technologies that support them.